David, your assumptions and numbers are wrong!

1) The majority of our customers are on the latest versions.  And some that aren't on latest versions are in active upgrade protection but haven't upgraded yet.  Keep in mind, we have call backs for licensing and fraud and know this info.  In reality, the cost of business goes up for us because we are now providing support and have hired more employees to prepare for December 3rd!

2) 40% for maintenance and support is by far the most common rate with many companies higher!

3) SPLA pricing is just software.  And Microsoft has been increasing it almost every year and we haven't!  Not sure why you would even bring this up.  Microsoft Licensing for SQL Server, Exchange etc... is out of control.  How you could even compare that to SmarterTools is insane.

4) Were trying to provide more for less and in a variety of different ways. This, in turn, decreases costs for customers as they don't have to buy individual support anymore, don't have to choose between email or phone support, and don't have to buy support packages that have tickets that are never needed or used.

Lastly, I'm sure you will find plenty of people who will jump on this thread because it is a CHANGE!  People hate change, me included sometimes.  We are truly trying to provide what customers have been asking for: more and easier access to support, more frequent updates, and hot fixes for just the issue they are having!

We are still one of the cheapest mail products on the market.  In some cases we're half the cost of our competitors and in almost all cases we offer more features and greater stability.  There are companies like Mail Enable who are a little cheaper than us but their product is CRAP (to be honest) and they don't really even update or add features to their product anymore and instead are working on alternate businesses and revenue opportunities.  Then there is SmarterTools, who has completely updated and rebuilt our products using current technologies, not technologies from decades ago.

The Microsoft and Apple models are to push people into the latest versions because it's almost impossible to support legacy products when devices, clients and protocols are changing so frequently. These changes put constant pressure on how legacy products were built.  We've done our best to keep things running in older versions, even going so far as to highlight registry hacks for some client updates. The fact is that what worked 2 years ago, much less 10 years ago, just doesn't work today!  These changes are not only occurring with SmarterTools but any company looking towards supporting their customers  now and in the future.

Hi,

We've just read the planned changes for 3rd december. 

I'm not sure if I understand correctly but, are we forced to switch to SmarterMail 17 from 3rd december to continue having updates (and to be honest mostly bugfixes!) for SmarterMail ?

If that's the case, can we suggest that at least the currently reported tickets about bugs to be fixed before this date so that the product can be considered stable?

Based on the high amout of issues we had to deal with when we migrated from 15 to 16, we are not willing to update our server until SM17 has been considered stable for at lest 6 months.

We can't play with our customers and beta test products on their back.

At this point and after reading this, we're really worried about the future.

The upcoming version of SmarterMail has been in BETA for over 6 months.

I would hope that you have tested SmarterMail prior to the release if you have theses concerns so  you have the best possible experience.  That is why the development team has been so available in the Community and will be till the releases of all products.

This is the path moving forward to provide customers more frequent features, changes and fixes in a much more controlled development and deployment environment.  This will have much less of an impact on your customers moving forward because the features will be released as completed and it will allow more focused testing etc.

We made reference to how many releases the previous versions of our products have had in the Blog Post.  We have spent enormous amounts of time on those versions to make them incredibly stable based on the foundations the products are built on.  

Tim,

I would love for you to provide a list of companies that charge 40% for support and maintenance AND mandate that you update yearly to receive SECURITY fixes.

David, the entire industry is based on this model.  Off the top of my head we use the following vendors that do things very similarly: Veritas,  Sonic Wall,  Fortinet,  Paessler,  SolarWinds etc.  There is probably a dozen more we use but I'm just going off memory and what I have recently approved.

In some cases, its higher than 40% of the software costs.  Sometimes we don't get support.  Sometimes it includes hardware warranty.  It all varies.  And then we have a number of vendors that do something similar to SPLA licensing and that's all they offer with no support. As soon as we stop paying the software stops working, which sucks!

We did introduce a Leasing model similar to SPLA years go.  Some companies like it because of the volatility of VM and Dedicated Hosting.  This way your only paying for the duration your customer is paying you.  The leases can be stop and started on the fly.

Hope this helps,

We use sonicwall, Paessler, and SolarWinds as well out of the list you have specified.  

All of their maintenance rates are 20% of the retail price NOT 40% which is my entire issue.  I specifically stated in my original post that if the FORCED maintenance was in line with the industry standard of 20%, I wouldn't be complaining.  But 40% is just ridiculous.

Sonicwall isn't features just fixes.  To receive new features you need to buy new products.  There have only been a few exceptions to this really and that is normally when they offer a new subscription which you also have to pay for on existing hardware.

Tim,

You are also comparing a hardware product to a software product.  With sonicwall protection, you also get a replacement device if your hardware fails.  So you get a different type of protection in lieu of the new features for the same approximate percentage of retail price.

You completely neglected the other 2 which are much more apples to apples comparisons.  Both Paessler and SolarWinds are software products.  Both charge 20% maintenance fees and both provide you new features and security fixes AND include upgrades across major revisions for the 20% per year.

As I stated from the outset and you have yet to provide a single apples to apples vendor that differs, any SOFTWARE company that FORCES maintenance to receive security/big fixes for their products all tend to charge ~20% of the cost of their software license for maintenance.  Backup software vendors I work with, HelpDesk software companies including ones that compete with Smartertrack, Other security product vendors, VMWare/Other Hypervisor software all around 20% and no where near 40%.

I am also far from the only observer of this approximate price.  A good quora article asked the question "What are typical maintenance fees as a percentage of up-front license costs for enterprise software?" (again I am unable to post links here or I would) and most responses pegged it at 18%-22% with a high of 25%.

David, I'm not going to continue going back and forth.  I replied with companies that we use that have similar models.  I'm not going to go into each company's pricing because if you spent anytime using SolarWinds, you would understand how FREAKING expensive they are for their core products.  Their pricing keeps going up and up and their charging for every Agent, User, Server, Desktop, or Service.  There is no comparison.

We are essentially the cheapest Mail Server product on the market.  Like I said, Mail Enable is cheaper but its crap and they don't even work on the product anymore.  Most of our competitors are 2 to 3x times as expensive as us and in most cases they're not as good.  Then there is Microsoft Exchange and its 20x as expensive as us when you take into account the software and hardware to run a decent sized installation.  When we have our MAPI implementation which will be available to every customer in Maintiance and Support, we will be one of only a few companies with a NATIVE, server-side MAPI implementation.  And of those companies, we are outrageously cheaper!

When we make this shift on Dec 3rd, we're actually losing money because we have already hired more employees to cover support.  SmarterTools isn't some tech giant making 40% margins and providing a cafeteria of food to its employees.  

If you think our pricing is outrageous and we're not providing the value you need, then a new solution might be in your future.  But if you broke down the costs of running SmarterMail, most of our customers are paying VERY little per year per mailbox.  Not sure if you're in the hosting industry, but that is where our roots are.  That is why we are so cheap and why we make sure our products can handle high volumes and remain stable.

There is nothing more I can say.  Wish you luck on whatever path you take.

I am aware of your roots.  I have been a user of Smartermail since Smartermail 3.  I was practically a "founding" user that helped establish Smartertools.

Your responses have done nothing to address or counter the rate you are looking to assess.  No matter how expensive SolarWinds is, when purchasing the product initially, any company would understand their upfront cost. Annually to maintain the product, it is still 20% of the cost of the product new.  If 1 year ago when purchasing the latest Smartermail, I was told the product was $30,000 to buy, I would have had the option then to seek an alternative at a different price.  

Further, if when I purchased the product, I was given all of the information that you recently released in your post on November 1 that maintenance would cost 40%, and I would be forced to buy it every year to receive bug and security fixes and I still proceeded to purchase, this would be on me.  I knew the terms and conditions of the purchase as well as the expectations for the total cost of ownership of the software from the day I bought it.

However, the issue I have is I was sold a product with a specific maintenance agreement and window and I was promised when purchasing the product that during that maintenance window I would get a certain set of services and a have a right to certain updates.  Now, 10 months after purchasing, you are looking to retroactively change what I purchased.  This is a classic bait and switch.  I purchased X and 10 months later, you are telling me that we are happy that you purchased X 10 months ago, but we just decided that you are only going to get Y instead.

If you want to apply your new policy to all new purchases moving forward from the date of your announcement, again I would have no complaints because the buyers would be INFORMED of what they were purchasing and would be receiving what they are purchasing.  To circle back to your SolarWinds example, it doesn't matter that they charge for agents, users, servers, etc because when the customer purchases they are told that and are getting exactly what they are paying for.  In this situation, I am not getting what I paid for at the time of purchase and that is the problem.

David, we have provided over 55 releases (Features, Changes and Fixes) since May 2017 for SM 16.x and  have been supporting SM 15.x since March 2016 while providing a BETA of the upcoming release of SmarterMail for six months.   The legacy versions have been thoroughly supported and are incredibly stable.  We did this knowing we were working towards these Business Model changes that customers were requesting.

In regards to the 40%, that is the same costs we have charged for 10 years.  Now we're just providing more for the same amount of money.  We have not increased any prices and actually reduced reinstatements even though we are incurring more costs with employees in support and development.

It really is disappointing you see all of what were doing and all of what I responded to as Bait and Switch.

Tim,

You are providing "more" to your customer base that has opted to purchase upgrade protection each and every year they have owned Smartertools licenses.

For customers like myself, you are providing substantially less and it is a bait and switch.  Prior to this announcement, at a minimum, I could have expected bug fixes and security patches for Smartermail 16 (i myself have personally reported around 5 bugs just in the last 3 months so I'm sure plenty still exist) which I am running in production for at least 2 more years based on Smartermail policies that were in place just last month.  You yourself have admitted to working throughout this year on Smartermail 15, a product that is 2 years old, so this expectation clearly matches the historical Smartertools business model.  Further, if SM 17 happened to come out before my maintenance expired, I could expect to receive security and bug fixes for that major release as well for a couple years.

Now, you are "switching" that expectation and saying there will be no more releases of SM16 after SM17 is released and if a bug or security issue is found in SM16 you are stuck and are FORCED to pay the 40% if you want a security update or bug fix and you are FORCED to update to SM17 for it to addressed.

That is not providing "more" to me as a customer, it is a classic bait and switch to the terms I purchased the product under 10 months ago.

You are admittedly providing more for the 40%, but that only impacts your customer base that has historically purchased upgrade protection every year.  For customers that purchase your software and run it in 3-4 cycles and frequently skip major releases (the forum indicates I am not the only one), this is major change with a substantial impact on TCO along with a "bait and switch" on the terms the software was purchased under.

My two cents... David, if you do not feel good with SmarterTools simply stop complaining and search for an alternative that suites you...

We ( SERSIS, not me...) are satisfied of the product AND the commercial policy, but if someday we will be not satisfied we will simply change....

Gabriele,

If they will refund what I paid for the software, I will gladly switch.

I am having a back and forth because I have not been provided what I paid for and that is what my problem is.

As stated in my posts, if they applied their policy to all new purchases going forward, that would be their decision and all purchasers would know what they are getting.

I am having an issue because I am NOT getting what I paid for.  I paid for a product and expected 2-3 years of bug fixes and security fixes for the product based on the support policy at the time of purchase.  Instead i am receiving 12 months of bug fixes and support.

If they want to refund me for not providing me what I paid for, then I will move on to a new mail server.

David,

  I tend to believe this is a good thing for most of us, I can understand you argument, however I was always told the policy was they would support the current version and one prior, and releases were suppose to be at least once per year, sometimes twice (every 6 to 9 months), so you would only been receiving SM 16 updates until SM 18 came out, which could be around 1 year.

   I do believe SmarterTools should support SM 16 for about another year, with security updates, because this was not announced way in advance.  If they announced this change when SM 16 came out, that would be understandable.

  But I do believe a lot of people have Upgrade Protection, since it is REQUIRED, to run any of the addons (Cyren (Antispam/Antivirus), MessageSniffer, EAS, EWS) and now coming soon with SM 17 (MAPI).  So that is why I think a lot of people will enjoy free unlimited phone/email support thrown in.

  I do think this will be better in the long run, as SmarterTools can focus on the current version only, and people will be able to contact support about issue and not worry about costing them a support ticket that will be refunded if it is indeed a bug.  You see this all the time on this forum, open a ticket, if it is a bug, you will get it refunded.

  If cost is an issue with you or anyone else, I see two options, first, you can use an authorized reseller, that gives you an additional 10% off what SmarterTools charges direct. Second, you can wait for sales, unless they are going to change things, they do tend to have Holiday sales, that could give you breaks on reinstatements, new purchases of products and sometimes renewals (I think I saw a renewal once).  They used to do support tickets discounts, but that will be going away obviously.

   Once this is all in place, you could always try to reach out to sales when you renewal is up, they maybe able to offer you some type of deal, it is always worth a try.

   Last, SM 17 is going to be way better than SM 16, I do not see why you would want to not upgrade, as stated by Tim (Thank you Tim very much for taking time out of your always busy schedule to post replies to David each and every time, this should you guys care).

  My background, running SmarterMail since v3 or so (12+ years).  So I have been through all the hick-ups too, I understand the prior beta releases were very unstable, etc. I have not played around much with v17, but I do not see much complains on the forums, and think this will be one of the best releases yet!

   I to be honest, I am not really looking forward to this change, it means I will be forced to renew my Upgrade Protection (I am hoping a sale will allow me to renew it at a discount *HINT* *HINT*), because my company is small, and on a very tight budget, I was hoping to be able to run SM v17, and wait a year or two, and reinstate my upgrade protection during another sale, and only buy a couple support tickets, I only needed them to report bugs.  But I might of needed MAPI, so I would of been forced to keep it active anyways.

  To try to compare apples to apples (Or however that saying goes), If I were to buy a product like TV, computer, etc, that says it has a 3 year warranty on the box, and after a year, I was told they changed the program, and now I have to pay money for the second or third year, that wouldn't seem fair to me.  I know you probably cannot compare this to what SmarterTools is doing, but this is the closest I can think of right now..

  Pricing is not a factor, you can charge whatever you want, industry standard or what not, if you are undercharging for your product in the first place (Which I think "Tim" claims), you can charge more for renewals (Upgrade Protection) or whatever you will call it now, Maintenance and Support.

(NOTE - This is my option, I might not have all the facts straight, it is hard to keep up, and I do not have time to research everything before I post this.  These are things I recall over the years.)

-dave

Dave,

I feel like we have the exact same line of thinking.  We are small and we are on a tight budget (in case that hasn't been obvious).

As you stated, if we were told at the time of purchase of SM16 that this was the new policy, I would have known and either budgeted for maintenance this year and next year or needed to go a different route.  However, I was not told and as you pointed out, standing policy has been to support the previous major release (SM15 got an update just last week).

As we have also both stated, a company can charge whatever they want (the SolarWinds $30k example), but they need to deliver what they are promising for whatever price they charge as everything that goes into that price factors into the buyers decision.

I also think your warranty analogy works quite well because security and bug fixes essentially amount to a warranty on software.  They essentially cut our "warranty" from 2.5-3 years to 1 year AFTER purchase.

On our side it's not really an issue about pricing or so.

We are worried that support and bug fixes for SM16 will stop when there are still bugs currently. We have a ticket open for more than one month, about mails being not delivered in some conditions and are just deleted from spool after 2 hours.

Our customers are asking if they need to change to another service provider to stop having issues with mail.

So we don't want to take the risk to update to SM17 in a hurry (we're talking about 20k mailboxes and 5k domains) because we're forced to, and then to have to deal with customers complaining with "breaking" bugs for which we can't do anything. If it was an open source software we could at least try to fix it ourselves...

For that reason we want to wait until SM17 has been running in production for some months before upgrading our main platform.

What if after updating to 17 we discover problems every x days, have to report them, wait for an update, put down our mail service to do the update and then do the same a few days after because of another bug...

Actually we were already doing this with SM16 quite recently when bugfixes were out almost every week.

How will that be with SM17 which is fresh and probably has not been tested as much as SM16.

From what I understand we have less than 1 month to decide what we will do, keeping with SM or switching to another product (or even to a custom solution build on opensource components).

It's a pain because there is a lot of things in SM that we love, but we must provide our customer a stable service.

Hi,

  I made this chart pretty fast, so there might be errors :

SM v11 Feb 28, 2013 (Support for v9 dropped)
SM v12 Feb 13, 2014 350 days (Support for v10 dropped)
SM v13 Nov 3, 2014 263 days (Support for v11 dropped)
SM v14 Jun 8, 2015 217 days (Support for v12 dropped)
SM v15 Mar 29, 2016 295 days (Support for v13 dropped)
SM v16 May 16, 2017 413 days (Support for v14 dropped)
Coming Soon :
SM v17 Dec 3, 2018 566 days (Support for v15+v16 dropped)

SM v11 supported for 613 days
SM v12 supported for 480 days
SM v13 supported for 512 days
SM v14 supported for 708 days
SM v15 supported for 979 days
SM v16 supported for 566 days

  With 979 days of support for v15, I can see what SmarterTools is thinking, they are 1 year behind their normal release scheduled, so in their mind v18 should of been coming out and support ending for SM v16 already.  That is probably just one of the many reasons, but that makes sense to me, however the issue is notice, legality, morality, etc.

   I am excited as all the programmers and support people will be focusing on the latest version, they don't have to go, oh a bug in last years code, lets figure out how to get into that tree and update it (They already said SM v17 has been rewritten from ground up).

  They also said people are already running the SM v17 beta in production, so that helps to weed out the bugs, and more staff to support tickets, I would assume critical bugs would be fixed in much less time, let alone just normal annoying bugs.  They have already stated they will help people NOW to upgrade to v17 in production, while it is still in beta to be sure it is stable!

  One question I have, how long will ST support the old builds of their latest releases, there might be reasons people can't upgrade to latest build, as it contains a feature they don't want, etc, will they code for the old build and fix that bug in the old build?

  Also I noticed they are naming all their products v100.0 so if that remains, you can notice SmarterTrack is saying 100.0 at bottom, there is no SM v17 it will be 100.0 build XXXX, the latest release of SM beta, you will notice, they announced it as just Build 6885!

-dave

I think you mean 6885, but you're right about the 100.0 versionning for each product

Nick,

Your comments regarding new major release growing pains is one of the reasons that we have not maintained upgrade protection yearly.  As a company that does not require the "add-ons" and our desire to not want to upgrade to a new major release well into the new products release cycle, all factored into our decision to stay with Smartermail last year when comparing the total costs of ownership.

Folks,

Reminder these changes are only a few days way!  All prior products of SmarterTools will be EOL!

-dave

We have been running SmarterMail, SmarterTrack and SmarterStats for many versions as well.  The upgrade from v15 to v16 left a pretty bad taste in our mouth as it had many serious bugs and our reputations with our customers suffered greatly because of this.  We've also deployed several updates to v16 that took us down as well.  

1. I feel like we're finally in a relatively stable place and we're being forced to upgrade to v17 to be current?  I can't understand that policy.  

2. Will all the add ons that we've purchased continue to work until we decide to upgrade to v17?  

3. Will we still be provided support on v16 until we decide to upgrade to v17?

4. What is the ETA of when we HAVE to switch to v17?  

My two cents on this is I would rather have a stable product with no new features than a product that has the latest bells and whistles and I can't depend on it.  

My two cents... or so... 

First, let me say that SM is quite capable of defending themselves.. and have articulated the finer points of "why" already.  So from my own perspective which is:
a.) I too am a small business owner.

b.) I run a software development / Software As A Service company.

c.) Not a long user... but have been on-board since SM13

'==================

Think that is very disingenuous to say that it is a "bait an switch" .. although it might "feel" that way.

I too am not excited about upgrading to Sm17, but basically because I not thrilled about doing any upgrades from anyone, from anywhere. Upgrades are not always the most pleasant.

Having said that.. To me, it makes sense to reduce the number of versions that is SM is supporting.  I would do the exact same thing.  Why?  
1.)Too expensive to support multiple versions because you resources become even more stretched, more limited.

2.) Focus. To quote a movie.... "Its hard to have your arse.. riding two different horses." 
     Well its even harder to support multiple versions of the same software.

If you have written software for any length of time, you find yourself paying for past sins.  Things you now wish you had implemented or coded differently.  If you are supporting multiple versions and a future release; the time to correct errors - re-test; et al.. greatly increases. 

Why does all the above matter to you? 

So while I am not thrilled about SM's new pricing / new approach, I am not surprised.  There is simply no "bait & switch" . I can't think of any software company anywhere that actually supports multiple versions, other than making changes for security. If there are security issues; then I refer to the EULA and actually what their license and/or support plans indicated.

Think it would help, though,  if SM would send a direct email or post to address some assumptions and concerns on a couple items.  Those items being:

Finally:
Everyone.. and most assuredly the product manager and/or software support wants a stable, reliable and affordable software /service.  It is in the best interest of all us,for this to occur.    Maybe I am too optimistic, but am expecting that SM will have techs marshaled to immediately pull us back out of the ditch.. IF things go south with SM17.  

Merle, these are uncharted waters. One can only hope. But a business that counts upon its email working can't run on hope alone. Keep your fingers crossed. In other words, Hope.

Merle, you are spot on with all your comments!  Anthony and David(s), some responses below:

All past versions of our products will run just as they do now. No one is being forced to install the latest versions. And just as with Upgrade Protection, if you're current with Maintenance and Support, add-ons will continue to work regardless of whether you've upgraded to the new release or are running SmarterMail 10.x!

SmarterMail has been in BETA for nearly eight months. Unfortunately, some of the most vocal customers haven't participated in the BETA which I always find interesting. But, there has been no shortage of BETA customers or testing environments! This last week we worked with a few customers that have 4,000+ domains / 20,000+ users on single servers. We are profiling and testing till the moment we release!

We will be doing NO new development the week of Dec 3rd. Developers will be finalizing tickets for customers for previous versions of our products while prioritizing anything that comes up with the new releases!

Since we notified customers of all these changes, we did receive a higher load of tickets for previous versions.  We have a handful of BUGS that we want to get completed for previous versions of our products and will be releasing another set of minors after Dec 3rd.

SmarterTools isn't trying to play any games with our customers. We're trying to do everything we can to keep costs similar to what they have been over the years while providing more. As Merle mentioned, legacy versions based on old code and technologies make it almost impossible to keep up with new devices, security concerns and the ever changing internet world. What might seem like a bug to a customer is really a result of how something was properly architected years ago for that current environment, or how a change in a mobile or desktop client (like Outlook) no longer works with our software the way it once did.

Lastly, I hear everyone on the fear of upgrading anything these days. I fear upgrading my computers, TV's, phones, cars, etc. This is exactly why we are making these changes: So we can provide customers with more frequent smaller releases that get much more attention and remove the "major upgrade" fears. The development and QC teams will be much more focused and we will have better results. For your customers, upgrades will have significantly less impact because they will be gradual updates and gradual implementation/release of new features. Its a Win - Win!

In the end, our goal is to make your lives easier via better products, less customer issues, and overall better experiences. To make that happen we need to make decisions and some customers will appreciate them and some won't.  We tried our best to take years of feedback into consideration.

Here is to a successful Dec 3rd.

We're burning the midnight oil till then and will continue to do so after the release to make sure we make it the best possible experience possible for all customers and all products!

Hi Tim Thanx for your effort!

We are very excited and waiting for Dec 3rd!

I apologize if the community felt these issues were answered, but from a business perspective, I still need these points clarified:

1. Will all the add ons that we've purchased (Cyren, Message Sniffer, ActiveSync, etc) continue to work indefinitely on v16 until we decide to upgrade to v17?  

2. How long will we be provided support of v16?  My understanding is you have one more version of 16 coming out with bug fixes, but what if that release breaks something else that previously worked (as has happened many times on v16).  Is our only resolution to upgrade to v17 at that time?

3. Since v17 is not officially released yet, what is the date that we are expected to upgrade by? As others have mentioned, I would prefer not to have to upgrade to a major build before the first of the year when my customers are depending on uptime with the holidays.

I understand the business aspect of this decision, however I would hope SmarterTools has kept in mind that many of us that made the switch to v16 went through a very difficult time and many of our customers felt like we were beta testing that product on them because there were so many problems.  I'm not anxious to go through that again and I would hope we are given a decent time period to make the transition.  If v17 had been out for 3-6 months already, I could completely understand the timing standpoint, but the fact that it hasn't been released and used in production (and as a developer myself of 30 yrs I don't count beta installs) is very troubling...  

I'm hoping Tim can clarify my above questions directly so I can have some peace of mind.  Thanks

Anthony,

1) If you continue to pay for the add-on's, they continue to work.  Same way it works now.

2) As I mentioned in my previous post today, we will be releasing another minor after the 3rd.  Clearly, if we screwed something up in a minor releases, we would fix it.  

3) At no point are we forcing anyone to upgrade.  Use whatever version of our products you want for however long you want.  What has changed is what we are providing support for.

Hope this helps,

Sorry, just couple of more things:

1. If we stay on v16 for a few months while v17 shakes out, will we be given any support on the product after 12/3?  It seems like the answer is "no", however if there is another v16 release pending I'm guessing I'm misunderstanding the "no".  That's why I was hoping there was a "date" that said after this date you have to upgrade.

2. Is there a document out there yet that says this is what you should expect/prepare for when upgrading v16 to v17?

thanks!

Anthony,

  My understanding is, all support tickets opened BEFORE 12/3 will be honored, that is why it will take them a bit to get another minor out, cause they are working on prior tickets.

  So if you have any issues, get a ticket opened up NOW, so they will have a fix for you.  But if something goes amuck on or after 12/3, you are on your own, that day is the day their website will be different and all support is free as long as you are running v17 and are paying for the maintenance package (Upgrade Protection).  You can always post to the forums and I am sure some of us will try and help best we can.

  Basically on/after 12/3, ST support doesn't HAVE to support the prior version and doesn't HAVE to come out with any patches, but as Tim stated they are planning to, and MAYBE they will even come out with 2.

  Microsoft has been known to patch Windows XP for a security issue that came out a year or two after EOL.

   Our course it would of been nice for them to support the legacy products for like 30 days, so we can get through the holiday's, and so we are all sure that v17 (Or whatever you want to call it) is stable, but it is what it is.

-dave

First, as enumerated previously, I am referring to the announcement as a bait and switch because at the time of purchase which was when I was considering the total cost of ownership, the support and maintenance policy was basically to receive updates for whatever the last major revision to be released while our maintenance was active was.  This would mean that at the time of purchase, I was sold SM16, all the updates to smartermail 16 and if SM17 was released prior to my support package expiration, all of the updates to SM17.

Now instead of that, all I am potentially receiving is one of the first few releases of Smartermail 17 when it is fresh out of the door.  If the forums are any indication, this is going to be a rough release.  For companies/people that budgeted support and maintenance every year anyway, you are correct this isn't much of a bait and switch, but for other customers budgeting differently, this absolutely 100% is.

Further, I am less concerned about that as I am about the dropped support for SM16 as everyone else has noted.  As previously stated, one of the primary reasons we have not budgeted or purchased support every year is that we do not ever feel comfortable upgrading right away when new versions are released.  Tim continues to claim they are burning the midnight oil to fix everything, but I find it hard to believe that everything is going to be truly production worthy out of the door with the number of forum posts regarding problems in the latest beta release.  Without access to SM17 updates, I am forced to hope and pray I do not discover an issue in SM16 over the next year.

I just thought of this, so the people running the "Free" version, will never be able to contact support?  There is no option for them to get any support, just the forums?

For anyone that hasn't seen the blog, here is the direct URL : 

New SmarterTools Coming This December

I don't think the free version ever included support. You were beholden to the forum. 

Correct me if I'm wrong there. 

That said, once a version of SM has proven stable (think v15.7.6821), very little support has been required, IME. 

Agree with Paul...   Never has been "support" in free versions
We run "free" versions for the inbound / outbound  servers....

r

Sorry, I meant, the Free edition could purchase support, don't think anything stopped them, going forward there will be no way to purchase a support ticket you have to have a Licensed product with Maintenance.

AFAIK, anyone could purchase a support ticket, maybe I am wrong though, maybe you have to have a license number.

Right now, I can go to their website, and click buy now, and click support, and purchase a email or phone support ticket.. If the issue I am having is a BUG, I will get it refunded.. Free Edition or Licensed, I thought!

As much as I disagree with Tim Uzzanti on many things (some of my pre-v16 posts may be worth a read) times have changed and unfortunately how software is developed and licensed has to change too.

When you consider how much MS charge for SPLA and what you actually get for it, basically crap software that lacks the most basic of testing and no support, SM is actually a bargain :) at least the developers fix issues. Don't get me wrong there are still things I absolutely hate about SM e.g. AntiSpam is basically junk (No offence to the developers but SM is about 5 years behind where it should be in terms of spam defence, its an area that needs significant investment).

Chris,

The issue comes down to notice and what was sold, not cost and value.  As I said before, if they want to change their policy, great.  Anyone who purchased from the announcement forward, knew what they were getting and paying for.  When Microsoft transitioned to the constantly updating Windows 10 concept vs major new revision numbers, first, they offered the upgrade free of charge.  Second they have not charged a dime for support despite all of the new features and fixes released to Windows 10 over the past 3 years (I realize that is unrealistic to expect from smartermail and I expect Microsoft to start charging something at some point).  Third, they have CONTINUED to SUPPORT past versions PREVIOSLY SOLD to customers in accordance with the published support policy when those OS licenses were sold.  They didn't change over and tell everybody, you are forced to upgrade to Windows 10, pay us for it, and if something goes wrong, oh well, we magically changed our support policies from what we promised you at the time of sale and now you are stuck with it.

As I have repeatedly stated, I don't have an issue with a change in policy, but there has to be a transition period/version to honor the support that you promised customers that made a purchase based on the existing policies at the time of purchase.  The proper thing to do would be for Smartermail to allow any customer with valid support when Smartermail 17 comes out to receive 18 months of "old support" (no tickets etc just the ability to download and install the fixes) which is based on a low average of the number of days each version of smartermail was supported based on David Fishers work in this thread.  They should also fully support SM16 for a minimum of 6 additional months beyond SM17 release.

Policy change is fine, but you CANNOT apply a new policy retroactive to an agreement that was made prior to the change.

Tim,

2 points (possibly 3, one is just my opinion)

1) The biggest issue at the moment we have with v16 is and has been the every 2 or 3 week releases. I know of one other small IT shop that has issues with the number of releases also. You said it above. 55+ Version 16 releases since May 2017. With several servers in house and several at client locations that is a nightmare. V15 works and continues to work. With the new way of doing things it's going to force us to do more work / updates then might really be needed. No we did not do every release. But when we did one for a specific server having a specific issue we tried to do them all so there was the "standard load".

2) This is a nitpick but still somewhat valid. V16 / V17 (100.) Requires Win 2012R2. Yes it's been out for 5+ years and in an ideal world everyone would be on that or Win 2016. This is not an ideal world. This is reality. I have a client who bought a VERY spiffy server in early 2012 and it is humming away nicely. All it's running at this moment is SM15 and and a small logging app that ties back to the mail server (or any mail server for that matter). Until it gets sluggish or HP stops supporting the hardware it's going to be in place until MSFT stops supporting Win 2012 (2022 / 2023?) there is no plan to go to 2012R2. It's not my call as I'll I do is manage the mail (not the server) and really not an issue for me but I seriously doubt I am alone here.

3) This is just my opinion. But calling MailEnable crap is not cool. I have a SmarterMail server that I pay for out of my own pocket every year. It has several charities on it. I am donating the money for the software and the hardware out of my own pocket. NOT at all coming from the company I work for. I also have a food bank that I deal with that was running the free version of Mail Enable in house. Since their free version has unlimited users and it was only the 1 domain it worked. When they needed to get a better version for a few of the features MailEnable gave them a killer deal on an already cheap product since they are a charity. Years ago when I asked about getting a discount the renewal on what I had from SmarterTools the answer was "no". So, is their product as good as yours *no*. Calling it crap and bad mouthing them, not cool. Again, just my opinion.

-Dave

Dave...

1. Will agree here. SM 16 has been a NIGHTMARE for us, we've lost tons of clients because of it. Though, not entirely ST's fault, we shouldnt have flipped the switch. v16 though has been an over a year beta test for us. We still have a large portion of our customers that hate the v16 interface, many cancelled simply because of that others because of the weekly updates, crashes and other instabilities. Though, the constant releases of updates can also be looked at as a good thing as much as it a bad thing as well.

2. I cant speak to this, we make sure within a year or so of a new Windows Server release that we upgrade to it. Maybe once you are ready to upgrade to newer major releases of SmarterMail, you will be ready to upgrade Windows as well to something beyond 2012 R2, say 2019. I thought it may have to do with .net versions, but it appears Server 2012 does support up to 4.7.2.

3. As someone who has used MailEnable in a large installation, MailEnable is garbage, it may work in a small environment fine, but at the enterprise level with many many 10s of thousands of mailboxes, MailEnable is less than wonderful and their support was really poor as well. While SmarterMail has been about as stable as a crackhead for us over this past 18 months or so, I can say that the devs and SmarterTools' support has been great. Even diagnosing really deep threading issues and other hard-to-diagnose issues, absolutely stellar, I cannot say enough good things about Matt and Von-Austin, Tony, Rod, Alex, Matthew etc.

echoDreamz,

Not just .NET but other technologies like SignalR etc.  Lot of it has to do with versions of IIS .  Its a careful balance to use new technologies which customers want while supporting the largest possible number of OS's etc.

Also, I'm not trying to bash Maileable.  We intimately know that product and the business model.  I am giving an honest assessment.

Dave,

All software companies have Known Issues (100's of them) but they don't fix them. We spared no expense on v16 and v15 and wanted them as stable as humanly possible knowing the direction we needed to go with our business model.   Most companies just push bug fixes to new versions or majors.  Your criticizing us for basically focusing on and eliminating all known issues in SmarterMail.  

We currently have a half dozen known issues in v15 and v16 that can be truly fixed using the technologies, frameworks and infrastructure of those versions.  We have promised some additional releases on the legacy versions since many customers put in last minute tickets.

We have busted our ass to make past users and future users as happy as possible.  We are not perfect, but when we do have an issue we work hard to cure it.

Without taking this too far off track. Yes, as I said in a perfect world everyone would be on the newest version of Windows within a year or 2 of it's release. But out there in the real world, where you might have to support stuff that is not on your own hardware and sitting in your own DC. Then you bring in the in-house IT people of the company that is using it, who have their own way of doing things, and yeah welcome to an OS that is probably never going to be changed so long as Microsoft supports it.

And, going back to MailEnable I guess part of it is *I* can call it garbage, *you* can call it garbage. Having Tim do it just bugged me. You don't hear Marc Allen (president of Boeing) going out and calling Airbus garbage in a public forum. And although I can only use my 1 install as a data point it has been rock stable with 20+ regular users and 150+ users around the holidays users running on an old server that another one of my clients was throwing out that I reused. Had Tim said "not as full featured and stable" or "not as mature a product" it probably would never have caught my eye. In Tim's defense with this rollout [and the holidays] he is probably overtired and grouchy.

For the SmarterMail server that is mine that I have the charities on, I understand why ST does what they do in terms of it, but I can and will still complain about it. [100% disclosure I have put 2 paying clients on it to defer some of the cost but they are friends so I'm still out of pocket but that's on me because I want to donate to the other places]

I do agree with you 100% that the support staff at ST are amazing and incredibly helpful. 

-Dave

Tim, yes, I know SignalR prefers WebSockets, but I believe Server 2012 (IIS 8) supports that. It also does have fallback to Server Events, Forever Frames (I think this only works for IE) and Ajax polling. Though, I totally understand you guys wanting to make sure SignalR is using the preferred WebSockets method. IMO, if it was me, I'd have went with Server 2012 R2 as min as well.

I wouldn't like to be in Tim's shoes the last year or two with respect to SmarterMail v16 and the ongoing debates regarding prioritizing functionality vs. being a credible alternative vs. reliability.  

I don't think we'd even be discussing the price  if it truely was the alternative we all needed it to be - Tim included I'm sure.

Through bad luck or, if you must, bad planning, ST will soon be supporting three active versions.  That's expensive and it's not an eviable position to be in but I think it says something about the commitment that, when the heat was turned up, ST put their nose to the grindstone, listened and re-focused.  They didn't orphan sites that considered themselves fortunate in being able to stay with v15.  They didn't reposition themselves as the cheapest "good enough" solution and and they reset the bar for SM high, where it has needed to be for quite some time, even though it meant pretty much a total re-development.  They look like they are about to deliver on it.  I think that whether or not we feel there was value in the price paid for upgrade protection in the past few years, that is in the past.  That ship has sailed.  Those development dollars have been spent whether or not it resulted in the product we wanted.

The gamble now is whether you believe or don't believe and whether you'll roll the dice again or not.  Many of us will face that decision before MAPI rolls out.

I'm hoping that most of us believe, so that ST can get some return on the equity they have re-invested in getting things on track again and build the coffers so they can lead rather than lag as we move forward.

I'm hoping we don't start focusing on price - being the cheapest alternative or less money than product O or even product X.  That's a race to the bottom and its not a business plan,  it's a going out of business plan.  It fails to take into consideration that if ST acheive what they have set out to, they will be somewhat unique as an alternative with full native integration of what we all need server side, increased funtionality that will finally be useful, and simplicity on the Outlook client side which will reduce support costs and reduce churn. 

If it's done right, that will command a price.  If we can't afford that, or can live with one of the other very good, stable, but then lesser products at a lower price, then so be it.  I think it is unrealistic to expect that this proposed alternative on steriods can continue to move forward and lead the alternative pack if, at the same time, the funds are not there to keep the ball rollling up hill.  Respectfully, at the end of the day, I think it's about dollars, not percentages.   An agressively priced  competitive product  with a smaller market share may need a higher percentage of the initial price each year to move forward than an expensive market leading product selling at a higher price; because, at the end of the day, it is about dollars.  Overheads and people are paid with dollars, not percentages.

I don't think we should kid ourselves, for many this is a last kick at the can; but, assuming it's successful, let's look at it for what it is and not worry too much about being the least expensive solution in the market.  There are lots of other companies vieing for for market share in that space that, if all goes well, will have a significantly inferior product.  Let them lead the race to the bottom.  There is good potential in picking up the companies that stay with O365 for convenient billing on Microsoft Office but pull back out for for their email needs.  They will still have Outlook.  It's not difficult ro provide a  superior solution, and Outlook won't be the barrier to entry or the major cause of churn it has been over the past couple of years.

Shivam,

We are intimately familiar with our competitors.   Hope this helps you understand the IceWarp product and how its not really an alternative if your concerned about value.

1) IceWarp is many many more times expensive than SmarterMail.
2) IceWarp pushes customers towards monthly billing for on-premise installations. When you stop paying, it stops working.
3) IceWarp has yearly on-premise pricing but its even more expensive.
4) IceWarp requires you to pay for EVERY user.  There is no Unlimited making it cost prohibitive for Hosting, ISP, and Service Providers.
5) IceWarp uses a plugin method for MAPI like MailEnable.  As explained before, this requires a plugin to be installed on EVERY computer connected to IceWarp.  These plugins are painful to manage, slow, buggy and have limited functionality.  The reason MailEanble and IceWarp (and most of our competitors) did this, because its a CHEAP and FAST way of providing some sort of MAPI integration.  SmarterMail will have native MAPI support just like Exchange in an upcoming release.
6) Icewarp requires you to pay for Instant Messaging and Video Conferencing.  SmarterMail its included.
7) IceWarp requires a Desktop Client for Video Conferencing.  SmarterMail provides video conferencing via WebRTC so it can be accessed from any browser without a client install.
7) IceWarp encourages you to use its IceWarp Desktop Client because the Outlook MAPI Plugin is bad.  This is a re-skinned version of emClient using EWS!   www.emclient.com
9) IceWarp pushes their Document Management Server (additional costs) which requires an additional server to run because its a re-branded version of the opensource project, LbreOffice Online.  LibreOffice online is a working concept, not a production solution.  It is possible to setup a LibreOffice Online environment and use it in conjunction with
SmarterMail.
10) IceWarp can't handle even close to the domains or users that SmarterMail can on the mail server itself with similar hardware.  In addition, IceWarp requires an additional database server and now we know all too well how limiting database access is and why they are unable to provide high volume environments.

I can go on and on.  Basically, IceWarp is the same product it was decades ago.  Its still all Windows Based administration compared to SmarterMail where everything is managed via a browser!  IceWarp has not been re-built from the ground up.  IceWarp doesn't build most of what they sell. Most of what IceWarp sells we include in SmarterMail at no additional cost.  What we build, we build right and for the future.  

I appreciate you bringing up IceWarp because its often an example we use to demonstrate all of what we provide and how cost effective SmarterMail is. Companies such as MailEnable, IceWarp, MDameon, IMail, OpenOffice, are where most of our on-premise customers come from and why we are so familiar with their shortfalls and pricing.

Didn't mean any harm in any possible way. in fact I recently renewed both of my products. I am out here seeking answers and voicing my opinions. I am in no way harming or trying to harm you. Apologies if my responses sounded like that. I do understand you guys are doing a lot of work. Sorry if I sounded that way. Was definitely not my intention. Sorry once again. - I am trying to delete my previous posts in this thread to rectify any harm you may have felt may have been caused. I do support your product though, I did renew two of my licenses and one of them is the SmarterMail Unlimited license Enterprise I believe. I just wanted to voice my opinions and suggestions. Sorry if it seemed otherwise or excessive. 

Let me say one thing: I (my company ...) come from years of use of MailEnable, Exchange and Kerio Connect with dozens of installations both as Mail-As-A-Service for various cloud customers and as ON PREMISE by others customers.

After about 2 years of using SmarterMail I have to say that I am extremely satisfied with the product (I am looking forward to the MAPI support ...).

As soon as the MAPI support will be available, we will test it first with our company mail accounts and, if all goes well, we will gradually convert all our installations ...

Also I must say that SmarterTools in my opinion is doing a great job supporting the customers, none of our previous suppliers have ever worked like that !!!


Well done !!!

Appreciate the kind words Gabriele!

We will be providing a timeline shortly on MAPI!  Were as excited about it as you guys!

Same for us, the support from ST really improved lately, over the past 18 months we have had top-notch level support and diagnostics. We've had some pretty bad issues with SM 16 and they really went above and beyond.

While we did receive amazing support from everyone, I have to call out Von-Austin and Matt. Those 2 are really top-notch guys. Von-Austin is easily the best support agent I've ever dealt with in the 20 years or so I've been doing this. Matt, as a developer myself, you can tell when the dev is just 9-5 and doing it for the check and when they are doing it because they <3 coding and staring at Visual Studio all day because it's what they love, it's their passion and Matt is that.